Monday, June 1, 2015

Love, Dating and the Importance of Visible Abs

I first came out (to myself) when I was 13.

Making the admission was a two-part deal: I would fully accept my sexuality and stop beating myself up about it, but not tell anyone. No one needed to know. At 13 I had no desire to commit the rest of my life to anything, especially something that could give me "the gay cancer."

That said, if I hadn't met Gabbie at 20, I'm pretty sure I would have started to come out at 22. I say this because my best friend from college came out to me that year. With his support, I would've had the courage to follow in his footsteps.

I sometimes wonder how different things would have been if I had come out in my 20s. I certainly would have lived a very different life.

When I met Gabbie, I had no romantic or sexual interest in her; she aggressively pursued me. We went from friends to dating when she drunkenly decided to lay down in the street and refused to get up until I told her that I liked her. The whole situation was silly and impossible to take seriously. At least I thought so. But Gabbie was determined, and step-by-step, she guided our relationship toward something significant. I let it happen, partly because I never imagined we'd have a long-term future together, but also because Gabbie's strong interest in me was very flattering. No one had ever paid that much attention to me. She made me feel very wanted.

Eventually the guilt of hiding the truth took its toll on me. At 26, after two and a half years of marriage, I came out to her and she promptly moved to a new place, more than twenty miles away.

"Free at last!" I was once again on the cusp of leading a gay life. I even had an awesome boyfriend. But, it turned out, Gabbie wasn't done with me. Although we were separated, she called me every day, and as hard as I tried to politely break our connection, she just wouldn't cooperate.

After spending two months apart, what finally convinced me to give our marriage a second chance was that Gabbie STILL wanted to be with me, even after I fucked up her life. To be so fiercely loved by her was an amazing feeling. She loved me with all her heart, how could I not love her too?

Fourteen years after reuniting we were still going strong. So strong, in fact, that I'd stopped pursuing men. I'd tried every kind of down-low, part-time relationship possible but never felt fulfilled for more than a few months, no matter how much I liked the guy. Hook-ups, friends with benefits and closed-loop relationships...none of those really worked for me. If I was going to be with a guy, I wanted an uncompromised, full-time partnership. If I couldn't have that, I was very satisfied with Gabbie and our kids. Sure, my sex life wasn't ideal, but I'd always kept my sexuality in the background anyway. And for as much as being gay was a core part of my identity, it was also just one part of a complete me.

When Gabbie first told me about meeting Charlie I could tell she was attracted to him. Even so, I wasn't worried she'd cheat. I was even more certain she'd stay loyal after I met him - the guy was obviously a low-life piece-of-shit. I KNEW it wouldn't take long for her to get sick of him. She was a billion times smarter than him. He could barely write his own name!

I was so confident that Charlie was no threat that I didn't care much when she started hanging out with him every weekend. I figured that the better she got to know him, the sooner she'd be done with him.

WRONG!

To this day (although I try not to think about it), I don't know what happened to Gabbie's relentless, fierce, all-consuming love for me. How did that loser Charlie steal her away??? For twenty years, all I knew was Gabbie's fierceness. Never anything different. She was unwavering - until she wasn't.

Honestly, I don't think I'll ever be fully healed from our break-up. It's been more than four years and I still fight feeling hurt when I see her. But I know I can't continue on this way. I need to forget the past and focus on the future.

When we split up four years ago, I was 44. Twenty years of desk jobs and no exercise had made me a little pudgy and definitely out of shape. My first priority was to get healthy so I could date.

November 2014

Much to my surprise, I found working out to be easier than expected. I took to it pretty quickly and the extra pounds vanished in a few weeks. To avoid going back to my old habits, I kept working out and in a few month's time, I began to wonder if I could drop enough fat that my abs would show. I know it's very cliche' but I find six-pack abs to be a big turn-on so OF COURSE I wanted to have them.

I've never been happy with what I've achieved, but as of November 2014,
here's what I could show :

Not bad for 48 but certainly not great.

May 2013

As you might know, the trick to having visible abs is to drop your body fat below 8%. I have no idea what mine was, probably 10-11%. Close enough that giving up was not an option. I had to try even harder to make it.

Little did I realize what I was doing to myself. Here's how my face looked in May of 2013:

And here's what it looked like last November, 18 months later. This was taken at the same time as the torso picture above:

November 2014

Do you notice anything?

In an all-out effort to lower my body fat, I drained a huge amount of volume from my face. Look at the canals and sagging skin. Yuck.

Sure, I obtained a slight indication of visible abs, but my face was so gaunt who the hell would want to talk to me? It was this picture that made me realize I'd gone too far.

May 2015

I immediately made some changes and spent some money to try to rehabilitate my face. I'm never going to fully recover because aging is pushing against me, but here's where I am today:

So...what's my point in all this?

I have a few conclusions, actually:

1. Gabbie's rejection of me was so unexpected, so debilitating and so beyond my control that my way of healing from it was to focus on one thing I could control: obtaining defined abs. In time, my progress toward that goal became my primary measure of self-worth, much in the same way that Gabbie's ferocious love had been that measure for my adult life.

2. Because I had some experience dating men when I was younger, my concept of what would make me attractive was stuck in the past. Specifically, I thought a thin, 20ish body would draw the attention of plenty of men over 40. This is true, however, I've since learned that guys who like twinks want the whole package. No matter how "twinkish" a 45yo guy is (including many Asians), other age-appropriate guys who like that look will not 'settle' for a guy in his forties. They'll only chase guys in their twenties.

It turns out that what most single gay men over 40 find attractive are "bears" and muscle daddies. Thin, middle-aged twinks are near the bottom of the list.

Too bad for me that I poured so much of my self-worth into something so utterly undesirable.

3. Even if was 6' and 180 pounds, having visible abs at 48 wouldn't count for much. They'd count for a little in traditional dating and somewhat more on hook-up apps, but overall, obtaining them is largely wasted effort. Face pics are universally demanded for a reason - they're what REALLY matter.

The good news is that my self-confidence has been smashed to nothing and I have no where to go but up. I recently read that confidence comes when you become comfortable with what you lack:

The big charade with confidence is that it
has nothing to do with the comfort of what we achieve and everything to
do with the comfort of what we don’t achieve.

People who are confident in business are confident because they’re comfortable with failure.

People who are confident in their social lives are confident because they’re comfortable with rejection.

People who are confident in their relationships are confident because they’re comfortable with getting hurt.

The
truth is that the route to the positive runs through the negative.
Those among us who are the most comfortable with negative experiences
are those who reap the most benefits.

It’s
counterintuitive, but it’s also true. Often we worry that if we become
comfortable in our failures — that if we accept failure as an inevitable
part of living — that we will become failures. But it doesn’t
work that way. Comfort in our failures allows us to act without fear, to
engage without judgment, to love without conditions.

- Mark Manson, "The Confidence Conundrum"

It's a daily and sometimes hourly struggle, but I'm doing my best to embrace failure. After taking a two year break from trying to date, I'm back at it, determined to find success through endless rejection.

I have a long way to go, but I am optimistic that one day I'll either be partnered OR I won't give a fuck that I'll be single forever. It's a weird goal to have but I can already tell the journey will be more worthwhile than endless crunches, planks and side planks.

5 comments:

The best about your blog is that you are honest and open about your experiences and feelings. It is very important for gays to accept themselves the way they are. When I was in college, I used to think that handsome well built guys won't like me because I have a chubby face and a fat belly. Today guys like me for the way I am. They call me bear. They love to share their emotions and feelings with a bear. It is very true that when you lose the fear to be rejected, you are accepted for who you are.

Yeah, get out there and try your luck. With your looks and personality you will find the right guy. Just be patient. And you may find someone who likes your skinniness - not everyone wants bears in their men over 40!

I am 67 years old and came out 5 years ago. I am thin and short. I get complimented all the time and have no problem in male dating and fun. It is being comfortable in being yourself that counts. My guys have ranged from 18 and up. Carpe diem!

I think that attractiveness is not based upon just gay porn star looks. I have found men and women attractive based solely on their personalities. Yes, many men are not like that . . .

That written, I also go through the ups and downs of weight loss at middle age. For a couple of years I struggled to lose the forming second chin. Six months ago I worked out enough that it went away. Now the skin on my neck is sagging and slightly wrinkled. Sigh.YNT

What is this blog about?

The earliest posts are my sexual biography. I tell the story of how I went from a 13yo gay kid to a happily married 44yo man with three kids. It was a strange, eventful journey.

Most posts from late 2010 - mid 2011 detail my struggle to keep my marriage together, in spite of my sexuality, and in spite of my wife Gabbie's on-going affair with a degenerate named Charlie.

More recent posts are about my reluctant transition from a suburban dad to a newly-out middle-aged gay man. It's been a difficult balancing act; I have a lot to learn.

Interspersed between the posts about my personal journey are my attempts to understand and explain bisexuality as it pertains to closeted men and their straight wives.

I have opinions but I like them to be challenged. I also enjoy helping others who are dissatisfied with their mixed orientation marriage. Please feel free to email me directly at random4780@hotmail.com with any feedback.